Logitech talks creating gaming peripherals

I've spent at least 200 hours playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. That's probably a low estimate. It has consumed my free time as I race toward the review, which should be posted this weekend.

Pretty early on, though, I realized that my Dell keyboard wasn't good enough to keep up with all the abilities and targeting you have to manage while in combat. It can get pretty intense.

A month later I'm stilling using the same keyboard and mouse, still committed to getting something more geared toward this kind of game. I can see where my aiming and response time is slowed by not having the ability to customize my experience.

By the way, Star Wars: The Old Republic is a Massively Multiplayer Online game. If you're not sure what that is, it's easier to think of it as a Star Wars version of World of Warcraft even if it it's plenty different. The storytelling alone is worth the price of admission. Short story, it's worth the $15 if you love creating different characters and losing yourself in a vast, dangerous, and rewarding online world. The long story is coming in a few days.

While I mulled over which gaming keyboard and mouse to get, I decided to reach out to companies that make the peripherals. SWTOR is the kind of PC game that drives sales of everything involved in playing it. Only Logitech got back to me with answers.

So here are the three questions I sent Logitech and the responses I got from Chris Pate, a senior global product marketing manager for the company. The company is more known for consumer electronics but does produce quality gaming peripherals.

Question: Can you talk about why PC gamers need a gaming mouse and/or keyboard?Answers:Gamers use the same products that other PC users do, but they are much more demanding with regard to consistency of input and overall functionality. While most people don't even notice slightly overshooting a link on a webpage or a taking an extra five seconds to click through onscreen menus in a word processor, gamers know that if they don't have pinpoint accuracy on their target or instant single-key access to their heal spell or reload button, they or someone on their team are going to die - and that's not acceptable. Logitech gaming peripherals are designed to be more accurate and provide more functionality than standard peripherals, ensuring gamers have hardware they can count on at all times.

What are the challenges for making these peripherals easy to use and powerful?
The two major challenges are balancing the needs of the veteran user with the abilities of the new user, and implementing features in a way that makes them useful but not intrusive. For the former, an example would be our configuration software package - Logitech Gaming Software.

Its user interface was designed by taking the feedback we'd received on previous versions of the software and implementing the features that heavy users desired in a way that new customers would be able to understand. So now you can remap a G400's mouse buttons to play back a single keyboard keystroke, a multi-key macro, or execute a complex script, but it's all handled in a very visual way - allowing those without much understanding of macro programming to easily drag and drop a command from a predefined list directly onto the button they're trying to configure.

On the hardware side, we try to take concepts or designs that people already understand and are comfortable with, such as a straight-layout keyboard or a comfortable right-handed mouse shape, and put additional controls around it that are useful to gamers. On our keyboards, we do not mess with standardized layouts or key spacing. Instead, we arrange the extra programmable keys, media controls, and the like around the standard keys so that the user has a familiar place to start and can expand their reach outward as they become more comfortable.

Similarly, with our mice we add additional buttons in a way that the user can easily get to all of them without accidentally pressing ones they don't want to. The overarching goal is improving upon a familiar design in tangible ways that make game-play better.

From Logitech's perspective, what is the current health of the PC gaming market and how do games such as SWTOR and Battlefield 3 help it.
The PC Gaming market is bigger and healthier than it has ever been, but it's not limited to the success of games like SWTOR and BF3.

Traditionally PC games have sold like any other products, on a shelf in a box, but over the last several years the entire business has changed. Gamers have always been early adopters and they have adopted the internet direct delivery model. The adoption has been so complete in-fact that it is estimated that the majority of all PC games are sold online direct to the gamer.

There is more opportunity for developers to be creative and more profitable. The indie game movement has had a dramatic resurgence especially on digital game portals like Steam (steampowered.com). Additionally, there is a wealth of compelling free to play games that deliver a quality gaming experience. Today there is more choice of what type of game a user can play and more choice in how they can play those games.